This award provides partial support for the 2011 Meeting of the Division of Particles and Fields (DPF2011) of the American Physical Society on August 9-13, 2011, at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. The funds are to be used entirely to support graduate students and postdoctoral research associates who otherwise could not afford to attend the conference. Special consideration will be given to enhancing the attendance by women and underrepresented minorities. The latest results in experimental and theoretical particle physics, particle astrophysics, cosmology, and heavy ion physics will be presented in plenary and parallel sessions. Many of the talks at this meeting will be presented by junior physicists, including the graduate students and postdoctoral research associates who will be supported by this grant. Broader impacts include the promotion of a general interest in science while advancing discovery. It will include a special lecture given to the public where the forefront results in high energy physics will be presented in a popular manner.
for DPF 2011 The American Physical Society’s Division of Particles and Fields (DPF) held its Divisional Meeting at Brown University, in Providence, Rhode Island, August 9-13, 2011. DPF concerns itself with research in high energy physics. High energy physics provides many benefits which are spinoffs from our technological innovations but its most important contribution to society is the growth in fundamental understanding. DPF2011 was the first DPF Meeting since 2009, and occurred at an important moment for the field with the impending end of the Tevatron’s highly successful operation at the energy frontier and the first physics output from the LHC program. The meeting took place over five days. From Tuesday, August 9 – Friday, August 12 we used the facilities of the Rhode Island Convention Center in downtown Providence. This venue offered us ample space for parallel sessions and informal meetings. Breakfast and lunches were served in the Conventions Center so that the attendants had plenty of time to mingle and network. We brought the meeting to the Brown University campus on Saturday, August 13 for the closing plenaries. We held a Welcome Reception at the Art Museum of the Rhode Island School of Design and a memorable Banquet on the Brown University campus. We reached out to the public with a public talk on "The Frontier of Physics and Beyond" by Prof. Harrison Prosper from Florida State University. A total of 491 individuals registered for the conference. Among them were a significant number of younger scientists. Thanks to the grant from NSF we were able to support the attendance of 40 young scientists by paying for their registration fee and housing expenses. The program consisted of plenary session with 26 invited talks that gave an overview of recent progress in the field and of parallel sessions with over 400 contributed talks that discussed individual topics in detail, including education and outreach. We organized two major Divisional forums, one on the DPF Instrumentation Task Force and another on Lepton Collider Physics. The former led to the formation of the Coordinating Panel for Advanced Detectors (CPAD) and the latter was the first step towards the organization of a Snowmass-like meeting in 2013. We also held discussions on Project X, the US role in underground physics, physics and modern media, women in physics and a major Town Hall Meeting. Details of the program can be found on the conference web site: http://brown.edu/DPF2011. The total budget for the meeting was $268,000. In addition to the support we received from NSF, DoE, the Americal Physical Society and Brown University also supported the meeting financially. The balance of the budget came from registration fees ($350 for early registration and $425 for the regular registration period). We are thankful that we were able to make the meeting affordable to 40 young scientists, selected to especially encourage female scientistst and minorities to attend. In summary, the meeting was very successful which manifested itself in the strong attendance by members of the high energy physics community.
